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Perhaps in the holiday spirit, EA and developer DICE have finally rolled out some dates on the promised Map Pack 7 and the Vietnam expansion. The map pack being first up to be released... tomorrow? Umm... thanks for the notice, I guess...

Anyway, you won't be able to put your boots on the ground in 'Nam until December 21. PC players on Steam will get it as early as the 18th, because screw you, that's why!

Ken Levine has finally revealed his super-secret project with Irrational Games. It's going to be another Bioshock game! You may be saying to yourself, "didn't they just make a Bioshock game?" You, sir or madame, would be correct... technically. Yes, Bioshock 2 was released recently, but it wasn't made by Ken and his team at Irrational. And see what happened to it? A mediocre sequel to an amazing game.

Thankfully, Levine is back at it with a new take on the series with Bioshock: Infinite. Yes, the "Infinite" is supposed to have some significance, but we don't know why just yet. While Bioshock first took place under the water, this one will be set in a sort of city in the sky during 1912 (post Civil War America). A cinematic trailer, much like the one for the first game, was released.

I came across a recent Associated Press article about a study done on the effects of a video game console (in this case, the Playstation 2) on a child's academic performance. Most of the same information in the article can be found in a similar one here. Demonizing the video game industry is nothing new, but some of the evidence against it is of dubious quality at best. Kids who have video game systems play more video games than those who don't? How did we not see that before?!

I was huge fan of the original Perfect Dark when it first came out on the Nintendo 64, spending more time on it than any other game in its generation. Let’s be honest, the N64 wasn’t exactly a top-of-the-line machine, but it had some great games. Chief among those was, of course, Goldeneye 007’s spiritual successor: Perfect Dark. Now it’s back and looking better than ever. The Studio that brought Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie to the Xbox Live Arcade has graced us with another one of Rare’s classics. After our hopes of ever getting a port of Goldeneye were dashed (thanks a lot Nintendo), we got bumped up to first class: Perfect Dark.

My free time of late has been somewhat limited and what free time I've had has been spent playing the hell out of Perfect Dark for XBLA. Those of you who remember the glory days of the N64 with Goldeneye and Perfect Dark have no excuse not to pick this one up. Come on, 800 MSP ($10) is definitely worth the (visually updated) fun to be had with one of the best classic FPSs now available on the Xbox Live Aracade. For more classics, I recommend Doom and Duke Nukem 3D (just not Marathon - that was a mistake).

Another year, another Final Fantasy game... Well, maybe not if you only count the major releases. However, their has been at least one game released in 17 of the last 23 years, with some years seeing the release of more than two. The franchise has been on nearly every platform imaginable. One exception being PC, perhaps because it might get into a fight with WoW to see who's better at making the player grind.

It's undoubtedly a financial success, whether or not you like the series. Bungie has much to learn when it comes to prolonging a franchise well beyond standard practice as well as capturing an audience on both sides of the world.

Well, it's been a long time coming, but it should be worth it. It has been confirmed that Perfect Dark will be released on the Xbox Live Arcade on March 17, 2010. I may be a bit slow on this news, but it's still awesome news, nonetheless. So I'll give you a few moments to collect yourselves. It's looking like the game (NOT a remake) has been polished to a 1080p, 60 frames-per-second shine, and has everything intact (complete with ornamental sniper scopes and back-pedaling simulants).